EDITORIAL PAGE — The battle for public support

The recent signing of the Whitehorse Mining Initiative Leadership Accord was viewed as a major achievement by the mining industry — the start of a process to solve problems through dialogue, with environmental, aboriginal and labor interests.

So far, it has not generated much excitement outside the mining sector. This partly reflects the fact that compromise and consensus are never as newsworthy as confrontation and discord. But it also reflects the difficulty all resource industries have when they step into the public domain to try to increase pubic awareness of the vital contribution they make to the quality of Canadian life.

For much of the past decade, the mining and forestry industries have lost battle after battle to no-growth environmentalists who preach that industry defiles the sanctity of nature for greed and profit. The outcome of these skirmishes was never in doubt, considering the choice of weapons. Industry fought its battles armed with statistics, science and logic, all of which have come to be viewed with suspicion by an increasingly cynical public. In contrast, the no-growth environmentalists played on emotions: fears of an impending environmental apocalypse, nostalgia for the past and guilt for our resources consumption. Environmentalism became a quasi-religion, its gospel being that salvation can be achieved only by reversing the conquest of nature. Among extremists, humankind is perceived as a plague upon the earth. These views might sound bizarre, but they have influenced government policy in more situations that we care to acknowledge.

The battle for Windy Craggy, for example, was won by theatrics — protesters dressed in costumes carrying signs to “Save the Trees”, even though none exist on the mountain peak and the mining company was not proposing a logging operation. And British Columbia’s forest policies are being heavily influenced by tree-spiking radicals and road blockaders who know how to attract attention for their cause with the help of the media, rock stars and the odd politician.

Because of the misanthropic rhetoric of a few radicals, governments are forming policies that do not make economic sense, common sense, or even environmental sense. Superfund in the United States is a classic example of such well-meaning foolishness. How does paying millions of dollars to lawyers do anything to clean up abandoned industrial sites?

All industries are being deluged by excessive environmental regulations that cost a bundle and accomplish little. In the name of improving livability, governments are stifling entrepreneurship, driving out investment capital and destroying the economic base that made our prosperity possible. It is a scenario reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, but with an ecological twist.

The turning point for industry will come when the public realizes that environmentalists, while long on pointing out problems, are short on solutions. We all want cleaner air, earth and water, yet few of us are prepared to give up cars and other modern conveniences. So let industry get on with the job of designing less-polluting automobiles and more environmentaly friendly refrigerating systems. Science, technology and free enterprise could be the engines of environmental progress in the next decade. Radical environmentalists will one day find there is no wilderness utopia at the end of the road, just as there was no economic utopia for those who carried the banner of Marxism for almost a century.